Girl, 1933; Photo by Paul Strand © Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive
Select images from the Strand Collection can be found at The Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin.
C o p l a n d and M e x i c o
Presented in partnership with Texas Performing Arts and the Butler School of Music
at The University of Texas at Austin and the Austin Symphony Orchestra
with support from the NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES
fest i va l e v e n ts
Austin Symphony Orchestra presents
“Copland and
Mexico”
Peter B ay , conductor
Friday & Saturday, March 21-22, 2014
8 pm
Dell Hall
The Long Center for the Performing Arts
Tickets available at austinsymphony.org
P ro g r am
Two Mexican Pieces (“Paisaje Mexicano” and “Danza de Jalisco”)
C o m p os e r : Aa r o n C o p l a n d
El Salón México
C o m p os e r : Aa r o n C o p l a n d
Chapultepec (Three Famous Mexican Pieces)
C o m p os e r : C a r los C h á v e z
Redes (complete with film)
Sc o r e c o m p os e d by S i lv e s t r e R e v u e lta s
P r e - S h ow le ct ure
“Revueltas in Austin” by Dr. Lorenzo Candelaria & Bob Buckalew
P os t- s how Q&A
Following Saturday performance, featuring project curator Joseph Horowitz,
Conductor Peter Bay, and Dr. Lorenzo Candelaria
Danzonera
SierraMadre
In Concert
Monday, March 24, 2014
7:30 pm
Bates Recital Hall
The Butler School of Music
The University of Texas at Austin
FREE
Da n c e works hop
Saturday, March 22, 2014
4 pm
Anna Hiss Gymnasium, The University of Texas at Austin
FREE
da n c e works hop a nd p e rform a nce
Sunday, March 23, 2014
1–3 pm
Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center, patio
FREE
B o o k P re s e ntat ion
Presentation of Danzón: Circum-Caribbean Dialogues in Music and Dance, the new book by
Robin Moore and Alejandro Madrid about the history of the danzón in Cuba and Mexico.
Monday, March 24, 2014
12–1:30 pm
Benson Library (Second Floor), Sid Richardson Hall, The University of Texas at Austin
FREE
UT Symphony
Orchestra, UT
Percussion Group,
and UT New
Music Ensemble
In Concert
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
7:30 pm
Bates Recital Hall
The Butler School of Music
The University of Texas at Austin
Ticket information available at music.utexas.edu
p ro g r am
Toccata
C o m p os e r : C a r los C h á v e z
Performed by UT Percussion Group, under the direction of Thomas Burritt
Homenaje a García Lorca
C o m p os e r : S i lv e s t r e R e v u e lta s
Performed by UT New Music Ensemble, under the direction of Professor Dan Welcher
Sextet
C o m p os e r : Aa r o n C o p l a n d
Performed by UT New Music Ensemble, under the direction of Professor Dan Welcher
Intermission
Appalachian Spring
C o m p os e r : Aa r o n C o p l a n d
Performed by UTSO; Gerhardt Zimmermann, Conductor
Sensemayá
C o m p os e r : S i lv e s t r e R e v u e lta s
Performed by UTSO; Gerhardt Zimmermann, Conductor
P os t- s how ta lk back
Featuring Joe Horowitz, Professors Dan Welcher, Gerhardt Zimmermann, and Tom Burritt
“Copland and Mexico”
BY j os e p h h o r o w i tz
by J a m e s B u h l e r
Visiting Mexico for the first time in 1932, Aaron
Copland had an epiphany. He discovered a culture
in which music was a pervasive presence – the
street-cries, the municipal bands, the dance halls,
the symphonic orchestras purveyed a ubiquitous
sonic tapestry. More than that: Mexican painters
and composers – Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo,
Carlos Chávez and Silvestre Revueltas – were
themselves ubiquitous, part of the fabric of social
and political change.
Copland returned to the United States
fired by an aspiration: that American
artists and intellectuals could play a comparable role as Depression-era ministers
of social reform. In countless writings
and lectures, in populist compositions
like El Salón México and Billy the Kid,
he urged his colleagues to court a “new
audience” – a mass constituency such as
the Mexican composers enjoyed, as did
Shostakovich in Russia.
Copland’s Mexican epiphany was not
unique. Paul Strand – one of the great
names in the history of photography –
amassed an iconic Mexican portfolio,
and served as cinematographer for an
iconic Mexican film: Redes (1936. John
Steinbeck’s immersion in Mexico (he
was a fluent Spanish speaker) ultimately
generated the 1952 Elia Kazan film Viva
Zapata!, scripted by Steinbeck with Marlon Brando in the title role.
A singular presentation of Redes by the
Austin Symphony Orchestra forms the
centerpiece of our “Copland and Mexico”
festival. A new World Cinema Foundation print of this film – about exploited
fishermen in Veracruz – highlights Strand’s
achievement: the imagery of Mexican terrain and sky, of weathered Mexican faces
and hard Mexican lives, is a galvanizing
tribute. And the score, by Revueltas, is
one of the most stirring ever composed for
film. As music rarely overlaps the dialogue,
Redes as
Part-Talkie
it becomes possible to show Redes with live
orchestral accompaniment – as at the ASO
concerts on March 21 and 22. The first half
of the same program is an audio-visual
spectacle combining the murals, paintings,
and photographs that we associate with
the Mexican Revolution with live music by
Revueltas, Copland, and Chávez.
Linked to the ASO concerts is a March
25 UT concert featuring the UT Chamber
Orchestra in music by all three composers, including Copland’s Appalachian Spring
and Revueltas’s signature instrumental
showpiece: Sensemayá, which derives its
churning rhythms from an angry Cuban
chant about the killing of a snake (representing colonialism).
The fate of this 1930s exercise in political art is informative. Revueltas died in
1940, weakened by alcohol and disheartened by the outcome of political reform
in Mexico and Spain. Chávez became a
leading force in the institutionalization
of Mexican music. Strand, Copland, and
Kazan were all in different ways victims of
the Red Scare, which penalized American
artists and intellectuals who had migrated
to the political left. Strand died in France,
an expatriate. Copland, interrogated by
Senator Joseph McCarthy, decided to turn
his back on the “new audience” he had
courted. Kazan interrupted the filming of
Viva Zapata! for an unscheduled trip to
Washington, where he named names.
The handling of the soundtrack in
Redes (1936) may strike us today as awkward and more than a little bit strange.
It is an example, reasonably common
during the transition period to sound
film (1927-1932), of what is known as a
“part-talkie.” This is essentially a hybrid
of silent and sound film, with abrupt
alternations between scenes treated in
silent film fashion with scenes of talking. This kind of alternation never really
disappeared from filmmaking—shots of
landscapes in films today, for instance,
are frequently accompanied, as they are
in Redes, only by music. But in the parttalkie the juxtaposition is often stark, and
audiences today, acclimated to smooth
aural modulations between scene types,
are liable to attribute the abruptness of
the part-talkie to technical shortcomings
and discount its aesthetic effect.
The best part-talkies—and although
a late example Redes falls into this
class—incorporate the juxtaposition into
the idea: it matters when the film talks,
when it does not, and how it passes from
one state to the other. In this respect,
it is worth contemplating the topics of
conversations in Redes and how they
reflect the struggles of people confronting the net of economic relations closing
about them. Likewise, the scenes with
music present an image where hope for
a better world is mixed with grief over a
world that would allow such suffering. In the standard release print of Redes,
both dialogue and music are recorded,
and Revueltas’ music is beautifully composed to sound as though it must labor
mightily against the technology, a straining that is central to its affective character. In live performance, this musical
struggle with technology is transformed
into an opposition, as music—perhaps
the world it represents as well— is freed
from the grim determinism of the recording apparatus. Live music, because
it belongs to the auditorium rather than
the screen, reopens the revolutionary
question of the film, asking us to redeem
the promise of the screen. J a m e s B u h l e r ( Associate Professor ,
M us ic T h e o ry ) , Director , C e nt e r fo r
A m e ric a n M us ic at t h e S a ra h a nd
E rne s t B u t l e r S c h o o l o f M us ic
Silvestre Revueltas at the Dawn
of His “American Period”:
St. Edwa r d’s C olleg e, Aust i n, Te xas (1917 - 1918)
Silvestre Revueltas (1899-1940) is widely recognized as one of the most important composers of the Mexican nationalist movement, perhaps second only to Carlos Chávez
(1899-1978). Drawing inspiration from primitive indigenous cultures, folklife in contemporary Mexico and a modernist aesthetic that favored complex plays on meter and
rhythm, the works Revueltas produced in a tremendous burst of activity during the last
decade of his life — Janitzio (1933), Sensemayá (1938), and La noche de los Mayas (1939),
for example — came to form the basis of his nationalist image. The image was further
burnished by collaborations with Carlos Chávez and the Orquesta Sinfónica de México
(1929-35) and his involvement with the leftist League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists in the mid-1930s.
At odds with his “nationalist” image, however, are the years Revueltas studied and
worked at St. Edward’s College (now St. Edward’s University) in Austin, Texas (1917-18);
the Chicago Musical College (1918-20 and 1922-24); and in Mobile, Alabama, and San
Antonio, Texas (1926-28). His reputation as an avant garde nationalist composer of
twentieth-century Mexico notwithstanding, a balanced account of Silvestre Revueltas
and his music needs to consider the formative years we can refer to as his “American
period” — a period that began in the city of Austin, Texas in 1917. There we find Revueltas concertizing regularly to rave reviews as a solo violinist and as a member of
municipal groups that laid the foundation for the Austin Symphony Orchestra. It is also
in Austin that Revueltas met the most important influence in his early musical life — a
Catholic Brother of the Holy Cross named Louis Gazagne whose written memories of
Revueltas offer a rich account of the Mexican composer’s life as a student and musician
in the capital city of Texas.
Dr. Lorenzo Candel aria
Profes s or of Mus ic His tory and Literature
Th e Univers ity of Tex as at El Pas o
FOR MORE INF ORMATION
contact Joe Randel at
[email protected]
THE UN I V E RS I T Y OF T E XAS AT AUS T I N
TEXAS PERFORMING ARTS
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